COVEN INTERRUPTED

“It’s witches. I know these things. I’m a very smart man. It’s witches.” With the exception of 83% of the time, everything he utters can be trusted to resemble truth. The man we elected by a landslide, that most legitimate and productive executive in American history, acknowledged the massive hunt for the culprits who colluded with whichever foreign Kremlin power may have hacked the election to get The Don elected. This president, thankfully, takes seriously his constitutional duty to protect the integrity of our system of government and to defend against enemies foreign, domestic and other-worldly. Leadership at its apex.

Everyone from Old Testament scholars to Bible-thumping televangelists knows that witches are all about the devil’s handiwork. Even the Saudis recognize this phenomenon and, in a gesture of good will and international brotherhood, invited The Don to begin the process of exorcising witches and their craft from American politics by the laying of hands on their glowing orb.

A well-kept secret until recently, the New York Trump Tower devotes a conference room to the craft, just two floors down from The Don’s residence. The Don denied any knowledge of it, claiming he thought it was a private movie theatre dedicated to playing Ghost Busters for prospective investors and visiting dignitaries. “I love that movie. The Pillsbury Dough Boy is my favorite.” After the recent revelation of the clandestine meeting at Trump Tower to establish The Coven of the Broad Spectrum Oppo-R Hack, attended by High Priestess Veselnitskaya, Counter High Priest Akhmwetshin, and High Priests Jr., Kushner and Manafort among others, Trump’s lawyers dismissed the suggestion of a nefarious agenda. “A coven requires 13 witches and only eight were present — in the flesh.” Trump’s lawyers were forced to concede, however, that neo-pagan doctrine recognizes a quorum at three.

After news of the Trump Tower necromancy hit, self-important religious leaders scrambled to organize a spiritual counter-offensive at the White House. Thirteen of the most holy self-ordained pastors from across the land congregated in the Oval Office and lay all 26 hands on The Don. One observer, commenting on condition of anonymity, claimed to have overheard Steve Bannon note, “Now that’s a pussy grab.”

Mr. Sessions insists witches are above all law except god’s law and cannot be held legally responsible for their craft. “We haven’t formally persecuted witches since the 1950s, at least not in Alabama, and that was under state religious law. I don’t think there’s a federal law against witchcraft.” As part of his austerity program to reduce the national debt, The Don is strongly discouraging any more waste of resources on the massive hunt for those he now knows are responsible. “This is my latest excuse for firing Comey. Thought of it myself. Smart.”

One Fox News commentator asked and answered his own question: “Why would the devil help elect Trump? . . . For the same reason Putin did, I guess.”

*My brother the fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to lastamendment.com

**My daughter Angela Moore, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. On behalf of the Van Wagoner Family Trust, she is in the process of compiling a collection of his art work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in lastamendment.com are hers